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Can a car come from the factory with an un-fixable alignment/suspension problem?

'04 WRX. Bought it Jan of 2004. 7 miles on the ODO when I drove it off the lot.

I've had alignment done 6 times, at 5 different shops, in the ~11 years I've had the car. Most recent alignment was last week, at about 150k miles.

Literally since day 1 the car exhibits what I'll call a "left bias". I wouldn't say the car pulls left in the typical sense; if I set it straight on a table smooth (and level) road, it generally stays straight.

What I mean by "left biased" is that whenever the road surface would disrupt the car away from straight, the car seems to always want to drift left more than right.
For example:
- On highway lanes that drop to the left, the car drifts left. always. well duh, :-) but...
- highway lanes that drop right: car might drift right, or it might go straight. When it does drift right it's always less severely than the left-drift.
- randomly uneven surfaces and/or rutted lanes - car can pull either way but it seems to go left more often.

The steering feels heavier turning right than turning left.
Effort builds sooner turning right than left.
It unwinds from right quicker than from left.
It doesn't always unwind fully from left.

Within the first week with the car I took it back to Subaru twice for this problem. The first visit was the first alignment adjustment. The second visit had a then-service manager driving the car. At one point his attention wavered and he accidentally let the car drift onto a rumble strip. His explanation, which I'll never forget, was something like, "you never know which wheel the system is sending power to and that can cause wierd things sometimes".

Countless times in the early years I considered the possibility that I'm imagining it. Then I would drive any other car and remember what centered-steering feels like. Then I'd go back to my car and remember what wrong feels like. Then I'd start wondering if I'm imagining it again after a few weeks.

I get a semblance of neutral steering feel with the right-side tires about 5psi lower than the left side. (I usually run ~35 leftside / 30 right side.)

It's probably moot now, as I've pretty much given up on this car's steering ever being right, and mentally I'm in a new car now.

But I'm idly curious. Do any of the gurus here care to speculate what the heck could be wrong with my car?

I've always suspected caster, but AFAIK that's non-adjustable on this car, right? I have "after" numbers from some of my long-previous alignments but overall the shops had always said the readings looked ok before and after.

I'd suggest posting your actual alignment numbers when you get a chance.

When an alignment shop performs an alignment, they adjust camber and toe to account for the crown in the road, while being inside of the manufacturers specs.
This means that:
If the crown in the road ins't as high on the roads you usually drive on your car will pull left.
If you are in the left lane on the highway, your car will pull left.
Donuts while turning left are easier to perform (note: do not do donuts on public roadways, or on dry pavement with an AWD car)
essentially your car is aligned to be left biased.
Caster is not adjustable, if your suspension is stock.

Have you asked an alignment shop to adjust the car differently? you can ask them to aim for specific alignment settings (assuming it's not a tire shop or Meineke/Midas). This may result in your car being Right biased.

Can a car come from the factory with an un-fixable alignment/suspension problem?

Caster is "not" adjustable, but infact it is adjustable (a little).

Post your alignment numbers.

If it is caster, you or the shop can loosen the rear transverse link bushings bolts (the 2 that go into the chassis), then pry/push that bushing as far outward as possible. Do this on BOTH sides. This will even out the caster.

A quick easy way to do it is to loosen those bolts while the car is on the ground. Go in reverse about 10 feet and break abruptly. HOLD that position and tighten the bolts. When they are good and tight you can than lift the car to properly torque them.
DO THIS IN A SAFE PLACE AND IN A SAFE MANNER.

Because the car was new don't think it could never have been damaged.
How is your tire wear?
Make sure you get a print out on your next alignment. Talk to the alignment guy. Make sure the thrust is correct. You can have perfect toe, caster, camber and the thrust angle can still be off. They don't like fixing the thrust at the cheap places because every wheel needs to be realigned and it takes time. The tires still will wear normally anyway so the customer is happy. A bad thrust angle would give you the symptoms you describe. A bad thrust angle is often caused by a bent car.

I'll post the "after" numbers from a previous job when I get a chance to dig up the papers. I don't have that info for the most recent alignment job.

I get the point about compensating for road crown. When I go in for alignment I usually tell the shop to make the car neutral, don't try to compensate for road crown. I cringe with shops ask "what lane do you usually drive on the highway".

Regarding tire wear. Honestly that's something I had stopped paying attention to well before I got this car. Long time ago (previous cars) I noticed that I consistently wear down the left edges of my tires (outer edge on driver's side wheels, inner edge on passenger side). Coincidentally, 90% of aggressive cornering I do is right turns on highway on/off ramps. Then with the WRX I did a few track events in late 00's. Not to mention donuts and drifts anytime there's a snowy parking lot. Yeah, none of that fun stuff causes abnormal tire wear. :-)

Oh one more data point. I'm on the car's 5th set of tires now (original RE92's, 2 sets of 16" snows, 2 sets of 17" summers). The car has exhibited this behavior with every tire set.

I'll re-bump this thread when I've got some #'s to post.
Thanks again!

Bump. Here are the numbers from my 2 most recent alignments, on 11/20/2014 and 12/9/2014. Both jobs were done by the same shop.
The numbers are in the following post(s).

Some summary points:
All the symptoms I described in the original post were pretty bad after the 11/20 alignment.
On the 12/9 alignment, the shop said the initial measurements looked ok (I didn't ask what "ok" meant) but they made adjustments anyway to try to reduce the chance of left-pull.
Overall I'd say the symptoms are a bit less after 12/9 than after 11/20, but they're still present.
I had been waiting for a chance to do a several-hours long highway trip to cement my post 12/9 impression. It's easy to overlook something like this on short drives. But when you drive for 2 hours and find your body & mind fatigued from managing a car that wanders like a dog looking for a scent, and for some reason prefers to circle left more than right... there's no denying it. :-)

Time to go deflate my right tires a bit. :-(

That all said, here're all the numbers from the computer printouts from both jobs. (All numbers are in degrees, in case that's not a given. :-)
I don't really know how to interpret them, other than expecting left-right symmetry, but I appreciate any opinions and comments.

If you turn your steering wheel lock to lock, do you have an equal number of turns in each direction? Or does it turn a bit further to the right?

Catching up with replies here...

It's 1.5 turns, plus a little bit, in each direction. Turning left, I feel it bump the lock about 2 degrees past 1.5 turn. Turning right, it does go a bit further, maybe another 1-2 degrees. Is that significant?

BTW my degrees guesses are from eyeballing the lines in the Momo logo in the steering wheel. In both directions the rotation past 1.5 turns looks like less than 1 stroke of the seconds hand of a clock, which would be 6 degrees.

Are you mostly the sole occupant ? Maybe get the alignment done when you are in the car

99.99+ % of the time, yeah it's just me.
Interesting idea, I never thought of that. I agree it could only help, but I would think that modern steering & suspension systems are designed to remain neutral feeling even with slight imbalance in the passenger load, no? (I'm assuming 200 lb of solo driver in a 3000+ lb car to be "slight" imbalance.)

Unfortunately I don't know the shop that did the jobs. Back in November I had the car in the shop for other work and asked for an alignment. The shop I took to car to doesn't do alignments, they bring customer's cars to another shop. Normally I'd decline that arrangement and go directly to the alignment shop myself, but I trust the primary shop(*), it was more convenient this way, and as I wrote originally I've more or less given up on the problem actually being solved.

(*) FWIW I found the primary shop by searching here for recommendations. This place came up well regarded and I've had good experience with them as well. Im choosing not to mention their name in case there could be negative association.

It sounds more to me that you've always gotten the standard "green and go" alignments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bikelok

Is the shop competent?

I've seen techs "massage" the equipment to show good numbers.

Those specs are fine for a daily driver non-performance alignment.

Is faking alignment numbers actually this common of practice? As I OP'd, I've had alignments at 5 (now 6) different shops in the time I've had this car. Are there actually that good odds that all of those shops half-assed my car?

That would be like if every instant oil change shop just poured new oil in and lied about giving you a new filter. Uhhh, maybe that's a bad comparison.

Is faking alignment numbers actually this common of practice? As I OP'd, I've had alignments at 5 (now 6) different shops in the time I've had this car. Are there actually that good odds that all of those shops half-assed my car?

That would be like if every instant oil change shop just poured new oil in and lied about giving you a new filter. Uhhh, maybe that's a bad comparison.

No I don't think it's common at all. I thinks its uncommon, but it DOES happen though.
I just wanted to throw that out there just because you never know unless you watch.

Random idea here. Get a set of rear subframe lock bolts. Loosen the rear subframe, install the lock bolts and then tighten up the rear subframe. The holes the subframe lock bolts utilize are actually there to line up the subframe with the body. If the subframe wasn't installed straight or if you accidentally pushed it out of alignment while doing donuts in the snow (I've actually done this) then your car would exhibit the same behavior as if the car is bent. Whiteline actually developed the subframe lock bolts because they couldn't get a good alignment on a lot of cars.

On another note, your car's handling will suck if you have more negative camber on the back wheels than on the front. You will be much happier with -1.5 in the front and -1 in the back.

It also sounds like you've been going to the same alignment shop over and over. Ask in the motorsports forum about a good alignment shop in your area. There are night and day differences between a good alignment shop and your corner tire shop.

Is faking alignment numbers actually this common of practice? As I OP'd, I've had alignments at 5 (now 6) different shops in the time I've had this car. Are there actually that good odds that all of those shops half-assed my car?

That would be like if every instant oil change shop just poured new oil in and lied about giving you a new filter. Uhhh, maybe that's a bad comparison.

Just from what I have seen alingment is not as cut and dry as changing oil. You have to adjust things in the right order, settle the suspension when you make change etc. I think it is not necessarily mal-intent but just incompetence. I had to jump back with the guy at Town Fair and show him how to adjust camber on a Subaru. I would assume any alignment by other than a performance race shop or any known good entity is suspect but that is just my experience. Fact is most people don't know any better, so shops are not going to get complaints so there is no reason to give precise alignments other than mostly straight ahead.

I just jumped in here because I see your location said Waltham, if you want to get an alignment and be sure it is good take it to Donovan's Alignment on Pine st. They will do it right. They were recommended to me by others, I Had all my typical as well as custom track spec alignments done there for years and always great service. These are the type of guys who would tweak the strut mount position to get the camber and caster matched on both sides on an old Mazda of mine. You won't get that kind of service at the tire shop. You might just have them check it and give you an opinion.

Random idea here. Get a set of rear subframe lock bolts. Loosen the rear subframe, install the lock bolts and then tighten up the rear subframe. The holes the subframe lock bolts utilize are actually there to line up the subframe with the body. If the subframe wasn't installed straight or if you accidentally pushed it out of alignment while doing donuts in the snow (I've actually done this) then your car would exhibit the same behavior as if the car is bent. Whiteline actually developed the subframe lock bolts because they couldn't get a good alignment on a lot of cars.

Interesting idea. That's more effort than I'm willing to put into the car at this point, but it's an interesting point. Raises some questions though. I wouldn't think donuts in the snow would load the frame any more than hard acceleration or cornering on dry road, no? I've done plenty of donuts in snow over the years, not to mention a few track days as well. Thing is, my car had this behavior from day 1. Literally driving home on the highway after rolling off the lot, I was saying wtf is wrong with this car...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suba_Roo

On another note, your car's handling will suck if you have more negative camber on the back wheels than on the front. You will be much happier with -1.5 in the front and -1 in the back.

What do you mean by "suck"? If you mean understeer like a nose heavy FWD car, which from a handling standpoint a WRX more or less is, then sure I agree. But my goal at this point isn't to get lively handling.

Or did you mean something else?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suba_Roo

It also sounds like you've been going to the same alignment shop over and over. Ask in the motorsports forum about a good alignment shop in your area. There are night and day differences between a good alignment shop and your corner tire shop.

That's not the case. As I stated in my OP, almost all of my alignments have been at different shops.

Just from what I have seen alingment is not as cut and dry as changing oil. You have to adjust things in the right order, settle the suspension when you make change etc. I think it is not necessarily mal-intent but just incompetence. I had to jump back with the guy at Town Fair and show him how to adjust camber on a Subaru. I would assume any alignment by other than a performance race shop or any known good entity is suspect but that is just my experience. Fact is most people don't know any better, so shops are not going to get complaints so there is no reason to give precise alignments other than mostly straight ahead.

I just jumped in here because I see your location said Waltham, if you want to get an alignment and be sure it is good take it to Donovan's Alignment on Pine st. They will do it right. They were recommended to me by others, I Had all my typical as well as custom track spec alignments done there for years and always great service. These are the type of guys who would tweak the strut mount position to get the camber and caster matched on both sides on an old Mazda of mine. You won't get that kind of service at the tire shop. You might just have them check it and give you an opinion.

Donovan's is one of the places I went to around 2005/2006-ish. I actually went to them twice. Looking back at my notes, the first time I had just a generic alignment (ie make it drive stock-like). Second time I asked them to get as much negative camber as bolt slop allowed, with everything else stock-like. Also mentioned the car felt left-biased both times. And the car remained left-biased after both jobs. (Just like after every other alignment I've had with this car.)

I'm not dumping on Donovan's. I don't remember details but I remember having good conversations with them and I felt like they had actual intent of doing what I was asking, rather than giving half-assed McService. (And by that Im not at all implying Donovan's gave half-assed service.)

The things is, there are millions of cars on the road (including WRX's) whose owners don't micromanage their wheel alignment, and yet people are not complaining en-mass about their cars wandering left and right. This was true even before the bane of poor driving habits like text'ing while driving. And separately, every other reasonably-maintained car I drive sporadically (wife's BMW X3, friends' RSX, BMW 3's, my dad's Civic) does not wander like my car. Admittedly I have no opportunity to drive another early-model WRX.

But it all takes me back to my original question, of whether a car can come from the factory mis-assembled in some way that it tracks poorly (even if only subtly) and yet never shows errant alignment numbers.
I'm thinking the answer is yes, and my car is one of them.
It's like a won a lottery where the prize is debt